


100mm-F8.1

by teletou



Category: Free!
Genre: Budding Love, F/M, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6204547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teletou/pseuds/teletou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haruka's head lightly knocks against Yazaki's, when he rides on the back of her bike, feet kicked forward, neck craned to look at the sky above them. The wind musses his hair, caresses his cheeks. He looks up, to a cloud painted in a line. He raises his hand, in dazed movements, slowly, until he's holding the camera over an open eye.</p><p>The shutter clicks, at a centred shot of the vapour trail, Haruka's finger lingers, pressed over the button.</p>
            </blockquote>





	100mm-F8.1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lisettedelapin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisettedelapin/gifts).



> HAPPY HARUAKIS ALMAAAAAA oh god I am so, so, sorry that this took like an infinity and a half to finish ;_; I-I hope you don't mind... that I... squished both your birthday present and HaruAki Party gift into one fic? Tehe? BUT YEAH ASDFGHJKL; AT THIS POINT, THE FINISHED PRODUCT PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN LIVE UP TO THE AMOUNT OF _TIME_ IT TOOK TO FINISH IT, BUT I HOPE YOU LIKE IT? I'm so sorry for this sorry excuse of a fic I tried to squish in as much of your prompts into one fic and what came into fruition from keymashing into the next nebula and back is... this shit. I'm sorry, I just wanted to get it out of my system at this point idk what I'm doing _(:3 7L)_
> 
> I hope the love shines through, at least?

His uncle from somewhere out of the prefecture had sent them a box of  _shibugaki_ that they had somehow manage to harvest a whole month earlier than it was actually expected to fruit. Makoto looks into the box with bright eyes and a tiny pool of drool at the corner of his mouth, perking up the moment Grandmother Nanase says the word  _hoshigaki._

He gets kicked out of the house mere seconds later, the very instance he volunteers to help.

Door slammed in the face of tearful wailing from the sweetest boy alive, Grandmother Nanase ignores him with a steel resolve beyond human comprehension – god knows Haruka would have caved in the moment Makoto's eyes start to water – and walks to the kitchen to go through the cupboards.

"That boy is a hazard," she says, taking out a fruit knife. "I don't want to send him home with only four fingers left in each hand."

Optimism. Frankly, Haruka predicts a larger casualty.

A bowl and a roll of hemp rope later, she comes back to the low table along with the box of _shibugaki_ , assigning Haruka the commanding position in-charge of tying up the stems. He was given a toothpick in his arsenal of tools. Maybe he'll carve Iwatobi-chan's face into the persimmons, just for Makoto. If Makoto is still upset by the time he gives a basket of these to him and his family, at least the sight of one or two  _Iwatobigakis_ would cheer him up.

_Or not._

On second thought, the grotesque creature in his hand, soon to be pruned in the sun, would probably scare Makoto into further tears. Haruka turns the fruit in his hand, shrugs as he chucks it into the bowl next to him, continues his peaceful afternoon making dried persimmons with his grandmother.

 

\----------------

 

"Haru-chan," Grandma says carefully, like she's calculating how much she has to push,  _like she knows something._ Haruka starts, barely visible, fingers slipping around a twine of rope. There's a slight chill down his nape – he thinks his hair might have stood up on their ends a little, too. He doesn't dare look up towards her across the low table, purses his lips as he ties the persimmons faster. "Have you done your summer project?"

_There it is._

" _Haru-chan_..." Her tone is dangerous now, just shy around the borders of scolding. Haruka sees her set down the fruit knife, putting the last persimmon away into the bowl in front of her along with its already peeled friends. She wipes her hands on her apron and folds them neatly over her lap, looking straight at Haruka as if she were trying to pull an answer out of him with sheer eye contact. Haruka knows well the weight of her narrowed eyes, sharp gaze piercing deep into anyone they're directed at.

_'Don't look her in the eyes,'_  Mochizuki had once said, as they walked him to the station after a study group at Haruka's house.  _'She'll lock you into place and you'll be forced to tell her all your secrets.'_

_'Don't be rude, Mochizuki-kun.'_ Makoto had chided from somewhere beside him, eyebrows furrowed, hands on his hips _. 'Nanase-obaachan is very nice.'_

_'That's because she likes you.'_ Mochizuki slumped his shoulders forward as he sighed.  _'I don't know why she doesn't like me! We're friends, aren't we, Nanase?'_

Haruka's reply was a nose scrunched in contempt.

_'Rude.'_

_'It's only fair,'_  Makoto had said between chuckles.  _'You were rude to his grandmother.'_

_'But you don't understand!'_

Mochizuki is wrong about a lot of things on a regular basis, but he could never be more wrong about that, because Haruka  _does_  understand. The only reason he knows how to use that power himself, is because he's often subjected it. It's a skill he has harnessed through first hand experience and careful observation, then ultimately honing as he uses it on people around him every other day.

Haruka braves a peek over the orange mountain of a fruit bowl, only barely manages not to flinch when he finds a cool, disapproving glare. ' _Well?_ ' she says through a tilt of her head.

A frown sets on his face, and Haruka looks down and away in guilt. His fingers aimlessly toying around a piece of rope he pulls taut.

"My, that isn't like you at all." Her expression softens at Haruka's honesty, turns concerned instead. "Are you having trouble?"

"I don't know what to do." He was thinking of doing a picture book some time over the weekend as a backup plan, but he as far as he knows, that's the last of last options. It's easy, inoffensive, and so dreadfully  _normal_ that he's sure the teacher would see the lack of effort slapped across the cover page in large, calligraphic sumi-e brush strokes. He could do that, yes, definitely but there _has_ to be something he could do that wouldn't end up with him being the fifth person in class to hand in a picture book. He just haven't found it yet.

And he probably might not find it in time for school on Monday.

Haruka glances at the wall calendar to his right, feels a part of him die somewhere.

Makoto's doing a plant growth journal – _mung beans,_ Haruka thinks offhandedly – maybe he should do the same.  _Do mung beans grow in four days?_

"I've got just the thing. Wait here, let me get it for you."

Haruka likes seeing Grandma stand up from seiza, graceful and methodical in her movements. She has always been a woman who carries herself with utmost poise and grace, even while searching through the drawers, leafing through the little pockets of memories she keeps there, holding back the sleeve of her kimono with her other hand.

She comes back with a black leather-coated box, carefully slides it in front of him. Haruka blinks once, twice, one more time for good measure, then reaches out to open the lid. What he finds inside is a small pocket camera, its lens looking back at him between two dials, black leather body cool to the touch.  _Rollei 35 S,_ he reads on the top left corner, sliding his fingers over the textured text.

"We'll go to the store to get you film after we soak these persimmons, alright?"

 

\----------------

 

The first picture Haruka takes is of the persimmons hanging from the beam just outside his porch, a curtain of orange over a clear blue mid-afternoon sky, shadows stretching across the wooden floor. 

 

\----------------

 

He catches a shot of the back wheel of Yazaki's bike as she walks it across the seaside street. A split second of black, the shutter clicks. Haruka sees the ocean again, through the camera lens, an empty beach and a flicker of movement almost out of view. It stops, and a step forward follows, white sandals peeking in. Yazaki leans forward, white blouse fluttering in the wind, her head poking into his sight from the edge of the viewfinder.

"Nanase-kun?"

Haruka brings the camera down to look at her, everything suddenly bright, in wide-view, without the frame of dark borders, nods a little in greeting. "Yazaki."

"Ah." She looks at the camera, hand curling over her lips, holding down a giggle. "You haven't done your project? That isn't like you."

Haruka looks away, face red, blows away a lock of his fringe. The contrast between the golden colours of the beach to his left, and the rich browns from the town to his right would make a great shot, maybe. The blue sky stretching over both, cutting through the middle. It's too bad he won't be able to capture the blurred, curtaining strands of his hair falling back to his face in photo.

Yazaki smiles, waving her hands in front of her. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! If it makes you feel better, I haven't finished mine either?" She pats the saddle of her bike "I'm actually running to the store to get more stuff now. Do you want to come with? I'm sure there're more interesting things to take pictures of in town!"

His hand freezes, over the shutter, in tandem with a baited breath. He could imagine clearly the image he captures, off-centre and shaky, the bottom half of Yazaki's face, the very edges of a smile overlaid with sunshine.

 

\----------------

 

Haruka's head lightly knocks against Yazaki's, when he rides on the back of her bike, feet kicked forward, neck craned to look at the sky above them. The wind musses his hair, caresses his cheeks. He looks up, to a cloud painted in a line. He raises his hand, in dazed movements, slowly, until he's holding the camera over an open eye.

The shutter clicks, at a centred shot of the vapour trail, Haruka's finger lingers, pressed over the button.

 

\----------------

 

Yazaki's project is a small quilt, patterned fabric mismatched and sown together to create a patchwork sunflower towards the middle. Mukaido-sensei loved it so much that she pinned it up on the corkboard on the back wall of the class, the centrepiece surrounded by calligraphy assignments from months back. Haruka stops in front of it on his way out, the after school bell drowned by the buzz of his classmates' chatter.

He sees a few of his photographs pinned up near the bottom right corner, overlapping the earth-coloured chequered fabric of Yazaki's quilt, a gradation of honey and caramel – Ren and Ran chasing fireflies, the late afternoon sky reflected on a puddle, the persimmons outside his porch – before bleeding into vibrant blues – Makoto balancing on a low seawall, a vapour trail across the sky, the back wheel of Yazaki's bicycle a silhouette against the ocean. His fingers brush against the backscatter lights when he reaches out – trailing over the stretch of blue, traces it until he stops over the dark, radial lines of the wheel spoke.

 

\----------------

 

"So you liked it enough to continue?" Yazaki asks during lunch one day.

Haruka toys with the pouch his grandmother made for him – orange, with cat ears and a simple cartoonish face embroidered on the corner – brushes over the soft velvet to feel the dials and buttons of his camera under the fabric. "Yeah."

"I'm sure you'll take wonderful pictures, Nanase-kun!"

"I'll... show them to you. Sometime." He looks out the window, wonders if he could catch the sunlight streaming through the glass panes to the windowsill, casting shadows onto the colourful _furoshiki_ over his desk.

 

\----------------

 

Mukaido-sensei calls for him to follow her to the faculty room, at the end of last period. Makoto's hand pauses over his shoulder, one end of his scarf still pooled together on top of his desk. _'Should I wait for you?'_ he asks in a tilt of his head.

_'Go on ahead,'_ Haruka answers through a blink.

He doesn't know why Matsuoka is still loitering around, but he's easy enough to get rid off with a scowl and a harsh glare. May Haruka's prayers be with Makoto, whom Matsuoka will follow around until the ends of the street where they have to part ways.

“Nanase-kun?”

The sliding door of his classroom opens, and he follows Mukaido-sensei out into the hallway, down the stairways to the right, where the faculty room faces an open window, the big cherry blossom tree standing tall in the courtyard behind hues of grey.

 

\----------------

 

Haruka was asked to take pictures for their yearbook – a cowlick of red hair, scarves wrapped tight, twice around, snowflakes on the tip of cold-tinted noses. His breath puffs white, over the shutter, seeping through knitted gloves. The viewfinder clicks black, over a classmate in backlight, holding a shovel and a pail mid-run, framed on the bottom right corner.

 

\----------------

 

_'I swim best free for the team'_ red bricks forming a low wall, a photograph placed between one of his teammates huddled together, red camellias by their feet, and another of a splay of dark brown hair – Yazaki turning towards her team, a teary-eyed smile under the incandescent lighting of an indoor pool.

 

\-----------------

 

A cherry blossom petal flies past, out of the boundaries of his lenses, disappears into into a spring with freshly ironed uniforms, black stand-up collars, red kerchiefs and blue skirts.

 

\----------------

 

“You're holding it up too high, Haru-chan!”

“You're _tall,_ Makoto.”

“I'm sure it's well above my head, though...”

“ _I'm_ sure I know what I'm doing.”

He didn't, in fact, know what he was doing, as Makoto helpfully points out, trying his very hardest to keep his laughter within the confines of both of his hands clamped over his mouth.

“I blinked!” A borderline offensive wheeze. “ _You're not even in the picture!_ ”

Haruka frowns at the picture in his hands, considers the overall consequence of defeat and embarrassment if he argues that _no, Makoto, I'm clearly in the picture, don't you see that little tuft of black hair._ It's pushing it enough as it is. Only the first kanji of the _nyuugakushiki_ sign board made it into the shot, right next to Makoto's head.

“Well, at least the one our parents took looks nice, right, Haru?”

 

\---------------

 

Makoto smiles his little closed eyed smile in the photo, two fingers held up, head tilted towards Haruka. He lets a small smile tug at his lips, as he places the framed photo on his desk, remembers why he looks away, eyes drifting from his mother behind his grandfather's camera to Yazaki, out of frame, walking through the school gates, brown hair fluttering behind her, longer than it had been last winter.

 

\----------------

 

He snaps a photo on his way to his classroom, Yazaki sitting on the furthest row from the hallway window, two seats from the front, white curtains fluttering, a summer-coloured morning peeking out behind her.

 

\----------------

  
“So...” Makoto starts, shuffling through Haruka's newest batch of developed pictures.

“No,” Haruka says, walking past him and into the kitchen.

“Are you going to tell me abou―” Makoto calls over his shoulder.

“No,” Haruka hopes that he is being firm enough, _Makoto please._

“How many pictures of fluttering scarves―” Apparently today is a day where Makoto decides to be _incredibly_ persistent, _goodness._

“No.” The too-large ripple of water tells Haruka that he spooned too much tea into the pot. _Eh, whatever._ He likes his tea strong anyway.

“Haru-chan―” Makoto slides across the floor, looks up at Haruka, puppy eyes reaching dangerous – though futile – levels. 

“No.” Haruka feels no remorse kicking him on the arm until he sits back upright.

“Just―”

“Drink your tea, Makoto.”

“Ugh. _Bitter._ ”

Haruka smiles behind the rim of his teacup when Makoto yelps, tongue sticking out around tiny, tortured spitting sounds.

 

\----------------

  
Haruka's last picture of Yazaki is one he takes with his heart beating fast. He feels his face warm as he holds the camera over his eye, sees Yazaki's _bright,_ sunny smile through the lens.

His knuckles brush against the second button on his blazer when he lowers his camera. Skin tingling and a breath caught, he stops himself. Fingers paused over the zipper of his orange kitty pouch, lingering, not reaching forward, he keeps his feelings safely pocketed.

“I'll see you around, Yazaki.” He doesn't know what else to say.

“I'm sure we'll meet again, Nanase-kun!” she says, like a promise.

 

\----------------

  
“You didn't join the photography club, at least?” Rin asks in their third year of high school, chewing clear through the straw of his juice box.

Haruka thinks back to the leather-covered box he keeps his Rollei in, tucked away in the back corner of his desk drawer, then shrugs.

“Huh. I thought you liked it enough to do something with it, if you didn't swim.” Perhaps he had taken mercy on the poor, innocent straw, granting it the peace of death by drawing it out of the juice box and spitting it out into a nearby garbage bin. “You should totally pick it up again, by the way.”

“I have club.” A pause. “You have club.”

“I didn't ask for you to take pictures of me.” Haruka can see the tiny bubble of regret Rin feels over throwing the straw away. He could have flicked it at Haruka's face, if he hadn't. “That's an idea, though. You could take pictures of Makoto. At practice. When he's stretching.”

“Sure, but I'm not sharing.”

He wonders if the purposefully timed nonchalant sip of milk was a contributing factor to getting a juice box thrown to his head.

 

\----------------

 

He doesn't actually pick up his camera again until his last year of high school, on the last days of summer. Held at an arm's length above their heads, his cheeks squished against Makoto's and Rin's on each side. The shutter clicks, with everyone pushing at, around him, trying to get into frame.

The picture is far from perfect – a little blurred from all the shaking, his hair jostled into a fluffy mess, Nagisa out of focus from being too close to the lens, Rei looking vaguely like an old lady with how far his glasses slid down his nose, and an angry eyebrow acts as a representative for Sousuke's presence in the photo at all.

 

\----------------

 

Haruka sees her again in his second spring in Tokyo, under the overhang of the station entrance – a closed red umbrella by her hip, cherry blossom petals brushing against an open palm.

Haruka feels his fingers twitch, clutching tightly the strap of his messenger bag, rough cotton canvas scratching his skin as he reaches down to an empty belt loop, for a camera bag he left back in his apartment.

  
\----------------

 

“Makoto.” Haruka stops in his tracks and pinches the sleeve of Makoto's cardigan, pulls him back mid-step. Patting him on the shoulder, Haruka then points to the giant store front to his left – _Yodobashi Camera._

“Do you need to get something?” Makoto tilts his head, curious, looking through the floor list by the doors.

Haruka shrugs. “I'm not sure,” he says.

His eyes never leaves the store sign though, feet itching to take a step forward, into the too-cramped isles of various electronic gadgets, searching through shelves and display cases for something to catch his eye. Makoto smiles as he turns to look at him, fond, amused – like he knows something. He takes Haruka's hand off of his sleeve and pulls, taking him across the sidewalk and towards the store.

“Well, you won't know until you've checked, right?” He hums a small tune, suddenly brighter somehow, than he just had been a few minutes ago. “Who knows, you might go home with something new tonight!”

 

\----------------

 

Haruka can feel a small smile tug on his lips, from the moment he walks back out into the cool evening air and all the way on his train home. The small, grey cardboard box bounces on lap – he can’t keep his legs still, hopes that he isn't bothering the lady sitting next to him. He cradles the box tighter towards him, miming the soft turns of a manual focus over the front, feels the ghost sensation of a shutter press under the pad of his finger.

He feels light, when he alights – weightless across the gap, floating, almost, above the yellow line under the toe of his shoes, the subsequent series of footsteps he takes for his walk home lost in a daze.

 

\----------------

 

_[2_ _2_ _:_ _32_ _]_ _ **Nanase Haruka:  
**_ My hand wouldn't stop shaking.

_[2_ _2_ _:_ _32_ _]_ _ **Nanase Haruka:  
**_ The lights outside of my window keeps showing up blurred.

_[22:33]_ _ **Tachibana Makoto:  
**_ ＊・。°（๑ _ **´◡**_ ｀๑） ゜・．☆

_[22:33]_ _ **Tachibana Makoto:  
**_ I'm happy for you, Haru-chan!

Haruka huffs, shaking his head at his phone. _Why is he happy about failed pictures?_

_Only Makoto,_ he thinks fondly. 

Still, he picks up his camera from the night stand, turns it on to look through the gallery. There's something charming about his window captured through fish-eye lenses. The faux toy camera look gives the shadows on his blue curtains a reddish overlay. Strong saturated colours, sharp contrast, white walls framing the dark inky sky outside. Brilliant lights line the windowsill, red, white, the occasional yellow, sparse little spatter of dots between orbs, lines stretching from the centre, painted across a black expanse, a luminous trail phasing into the textures of his wallpaper.

 

\----------------

 

Makoto's eyebrows shot up, lips parted softly on the screen of his viewfinder. He points his finger, blurred from being too close to the lens and Haruka moves back, the screen going through the station name sign board, to the LED lights of the train schedule, before going back to Makoto. Haruka peeks over the camera, looks at Makoto questioningly. He says nothing, points to something behind him.

Haruka pans his camera across the train tracks as he turns. The edge of a white scarf flutters into the edge of the screen, a splay of brown hair feathers in when he stops. Yazaki curls a hand behind her ear as Haruka lowers his camera, holding down stray locks of hair caused by the arriving train.

“Haru?”

The hem of her long skirt lightly grazes the top of her ankle boots. Yazaki bounces on the balls of her feet, the sides of her shoes grazing against each other, toe box on the edge of the yellow line before she steps forward.

“The train is here…?”

She disappears through the doors, walks into the crowded car. Haruka stands rooted to the ground, feet locked together.

“Haru…?”

He distantly hears ringing – a short warning for the train doors starting to close. His hair falls to his face, tickling his cheek as he feels the soft pull of the train leaving the station.

“Oh. Oh well...”

Haruka looks at the pillar where Yazaki was. A new crowd files in and fills the platform, a high school girl toting a guitar case standing in place of Yazaki. He sighs, gaze dropping down to his shoes.

“The next train comes in three minutes, I guess…?”

 

\----------------

 

Approaching her took shuffling feet and trembling white knuckles. False starts and glares from the lady standing next to him. He trips, a few steps away from her. She doesn't notice. He's glad. Life is infinitely easier when he could offer a small thankful prayer instead of doing a series of complex mental manoeuvres in avoidance of Rin and his potential glee towards his embarrassment. Knowing Rin, he will _never_ let it go. _'Hey, Haru?'_ he'd say, on his deathbed. _'Remember when you face planted in front of that girl you liked?'_

Haruka has enough Rin-induced problems in his life as it is. He really doesn't need any more.

For his sake – if not to see where baited breaths and sweaty, quivering hands would lead him, then to make Rin shut the fuck up – he breathes. Once in, once out―

“Yazaki.” He nearly chokes, barely catches his toes from scuffing the floor.

She's standing by the train doors, leaning against the metal supporter by the priority seats. Haruka has his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, hopes Yazaki doesn't see him worrying the leather, bunched together in his fists curled tight. Brown eyes flickers up, looks into his through long eyelashes. Both her hands shoot up, held over her mouth as she lets out a surprised squeak.

“Nanase-kun!” she gasps. “Awawawa, you're Nanase-kun, right?”

Cheeks warm, he looks away, tries to curl into his jacket when he nods.

“It's been a while! I wouldn't have thought I'd see you here!”

"Swimming..." Unintelligible mumbles, sentences trailing away. Haruka absolutely hates this. He and words aren't usually on good terms, but they seem to have a certain fondness for jumping ship whenever Yazaki is concerned. "Scholarship. Makoto is here too."

"Oh, I thought the guy I see in campus every now and again looked like Tachibana-kun..." Yazaki curls a hand over her mouth, eyebrows furrowed and face scrunched up, trying her hardest to summon a particular memory, it seems. “He’s so _huge_ now though. Walking behind him feels like walking behind a wall. I was kind of scared to call out to him...”

_Ah, yes, that’s Makoto alright._

“But never mind that now!” Yazaki says, clapping her hands in front of her mouth. “Nanase-kun! _Wow!_ I can’t believe this!”

He really doesn’t know how to respond, shuffles his feet awkwardly.

“I’m so glad to see you! And that you’re still swimming!” She’s holding up one arm now, flexing her biceps under the layers of her sweater. “I’m not going to lose to you, by the way. I still keep up with my swimming too!” After a small, determined huff, Yazaki laces her fingers behind her, smiling at him as she would all those years ago in Iwatobi, sunflowers and a warm summer’s day.

Haruka melts, the same as he did when the sleeves of his _gakuran_ still reaches the tip of his fingers. 

‘ _Soon we will arrive in Sakura-Shimmachi. After Sakura-shimmachi we will stop at_ _―_ _’_

“Oh,” Yazaki’s voice softer now, as she looks down. “This is my stop.” The train comes to a stop, the doors behind her opens. “See you around then, Nanase-kun?”

She takes a backwards step, looks between him and the platform, shuffles on to the yellow line.

“See y―”

“Haruka _―_ is... fine...” Haruka says behind a choked gasp, hesitant.

The warning bell rings, he hears the doors begin to close. Yazaki stands still, wide eyed, lips parted, a hint of red spreading across her cheeks.

“Then!” She shouts after a beat, over the alarm. “You can you call me Aki!”

Haruka misses the chance to call her by her name, for the first time – cut off by the train doors closing between them. She waves at him, behind the window, as the train leaves the station.

Haruka turns around, leans back on the metal support where she had stood. He takes in a shaky inhale, tries to hide a blush behind his hand. Warm breath passes between his fingers. His thoughts start to cloud.

‘ _The next stop is Youga, Youga...’_

‘ _Youga...’_ his thought echoes, serene. He feels the train tracks rumble beneath his feet. He stays quiet for a moment, not quite registering _―_

_Shit._

His shoulders tense, he moves his hand up his face, pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance.

_He missed his stop by three stations._

 

\----------------

 

 

 

"Yazaki? From primary school? Oh, man, that's some love story bullshit right there! How long have you been crushing on her? You've only managed to go up to her  _now? Haru--"_

Haruka slams his laptop closed, only to have this phone incessantly beep. He unlocks his screen, finds a popup notification from LINE, a sticker of a laughing cat smack in the middle and a small white number on the top right corner telling him there's five probably similar messages waiting for him in the chat.

Sometimes Haruka wishes he has better choice in friends. 

_[21:09]_ **Matsuoka Rin:  
** HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA  
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA  
HAHAHAHAHA

_[21:10]_ _ **Matsuoka Rin sent a**_ _ **sticker**_  

_[21:10]_ _**Matsuoka Rin sent a** _ _**sticker** _

_[21:10]_ _**Matsuoka Rin sent a** _ _**sticker** _

_[21:11]_ _**Matsuoka Rin sent a** _ _**sticker** _

_[21:11]_ _ **Nanase Haruka  
**_ How's getting into Makoto's pants going?

 A blissful sigh leaves his lips, when Rin stops replying for the rest of the night. 

 

\----------------

 

"Pentax Q... You're still doing photography?" Aki asks, thumbing over the shutter and dials of his camera, turning the zoom ring outwards, inwards.

Haruka nods, not quite looking at her, past her shoulders through strays strands of her ponytail – it’s the first time he has seen her hair pulled up, it’s cute, the way it isn’t quite long enough yet to be anything more than a fluffed up bundle, odd curls flicking up at the base where it’s the shortest. She turns towards him, a sunshine smile, the concrete pillar behind her blurs out of focus.

"That's good to hear! I've always been a fan, so…"

Haruka thinks he hears the sound of an announcement echoing throughout the platform. A train passes through, without stopping. He looks, _really looks_ at her now, through faint black lines falling over his eyes.

“It’s hard to keep it up,” he finds himself say, words tumbling into the space between them. “With training and all…”

“Ah,” Aki hums in understanding. “I’d imagine you’d be busy.”

A few beats of silence, white noise phases in, and the platform fills. They turn to the sound of footsteps, people queuing behind the yellow line, tracks on the opposite lane peeking from in between their backs.

“What happened to your Rollei?” Aki twines her fingers around the camera strap. She bounces her legs softly, knees shifting under her skirt, knocking into his.

“I thought it was time for it to rest.” He still has it with him though – kept in the black leather-coated box his grandmother had slid across the table in front of him that one summer day, in the top most drawer of his desk.

Aki traces a finger along the body of the lens, her small, fond smile reaching her eyes. “Telephoto toy lens.” Her voice is cheerful as she brings the camera to her face, looking at him through the back screen with one eye closed. “That’s very like you, Haruka-kun.”

She catches him off guard, pointing the camera at him. He jumps – barely manages to shoot a hand out, fingers like blinds over an eye, half of his face covered the moment the shutter clicks.

 

\----------------

 

On the very top of the stack of developed pictures, right under the envelope flap is a photo of himself in lomographic colours, eyes wide and lips halfway parted, his right hand in blurred movement filling one side of the picture. He smiles, when he turns away from the corkboard over his desk, toeing off his slippers and slides under the blankets on his bed, leaving the hazy light surrounding stray strands of his hair, the clumsy off-focused  _bokeh,_ and the warm touch of the beginnings of a sunset painted across the station's concrete pillars.

 

\----------------

 

_[08:02]_ _ **Tachibana Makoto:  
**_ Goodluck, Haru!

_[08:03]_ _ **Tachibana Makoto:  
**_ You can do it!!

_[08:03]_ _ **Tachibana Makoto:  
**_ Fight!!! o(｀ω´*)o

_[08:08]_ _ **Nanase Haruka:  
**_ I'm not going to a brawl, Makoto.

 

\----------------

  
He doesn’t quite remember what he says, the walk between his campus and the steps he takes down the stairs to the station. A particularly rude man in a dress shirt cuts between them, knocks him back a few steps. He steadies himself. He looks up, after the man walks past. In the midst of blurred figures, nondescript, ever-moving, constantly changing, his heartbeat interweaves with arrhythmic thrums of footsteps against pavement. 

Yazaki Aki stands in front of him, behind the bustling Tokyo crowd, little braids tucked behind her ears, eyes locked just a shy whisper to his left―

Cheeks dusted a deep red, mouth hung open, caught in a stutter, shaping over soundless words in rapid fire.

She slaps her hands to her face suddenly, and Haruka barely conceals a startled jerk. Curling into herself, she tries to hide behind a long, tiny squeak.

“That’s so _unfair!”_ He hears a her voice, muffled. “You can’t just― out of nowhere like that― _Haruka-kun!”_

“I’m sorry?” Haruka offers, voice small. He shuffles his feet, pulls on his opposite arm, counts the little bumps on the tiled line of the floor.

“I’m so happy you aren’t taking pictures right now, _gosh._ ” He wonders if Aki could breath properly, through the gap between her palms. Should he be concerned? She’s starting to sound a little breathless.

He’s going to kill his childhood crush before even nabbing a date. _That’s_ a story to tell the his future children or his friends’ children.

Aki lets her hands fall to her sides, fists balled, and again, Haruka starts. This is turning out to be more of a workout for his heart than he would have ever thought. He wonders if he could just spend time in close quarters with Yazaki Aki everyday and come back to his coach saying that he did his daily exercise. It sure does feel like a reliable substitute.

“Let’s go, then!” Aki says, determined, looking straight into him.

“Huh?” Haruka responds, because the power of eloquence escapes him often when he’s with her.

“Saturday,” she raises her voice, slightly, just to be heard over the station master’s voice filtering through the speakers. “I’m free.”

‘ _Do you want to go somewhere? With me?’_

Oh.

_Oh._

He isn’t sure if _asking her out_ was explicitly part of his plans when he put on his shoes this morning, but apparently that’s what he did, just five minutes ago. Why is he like this. Why doesn’t he have the flexibility to kick himself in the face.

“Is the sea okay with you?” Haruka asks, mumbles as he peers at her through his fringe.

Aki laughs, voice warm and rich like honey, the corners of her eyes crinkles.

“Haruka-kun is still Haruka-kun, even after all these years, huh?"

 

\----------------

 

 

 

Haruka barely remembers keying open the door to his apartment, finds himself panting and out of breath in his _genkan._ His shoes knock against the raised floor, and he stumbles, just a bit. Thought fuzzy, vision hazy, he stands there, looking down to his feet, counts the little noise of static as his eyes adjusts to the dark.

_This is bad,_ he thinks, fingers failing to pull loose his laces.

_This is really bad._ He doesn't remember kicking his shoes aside, trips into the hallway on socked feet.

_This is really, really, bad._

His jacket hoodie falls over his head, as he drops himself onto his bed. It's hard to breathe, with his face sunken into the depths of his pillow. Face half turned, cotton caressing his cheeks, Haruka opens his phone, squints at the screen's illumination.

He vaguely remembers scrolling through his LINE contact, and he probably _did_ open Rin's chatroom at some point – but perhaps, sometime between then and now, he got possessed or something because surely, he didn't write " _I think I might have fallen in lo_ _―_ " inside the textbox.

Forcing the cursor backwards, Haruka aggressively deletes his half written message, settles with sending a curt " _Fuck you._ " instead and muting Rin's notifications before thumbing over to Makoto's contact. He freezes over the keyboard, unintelligible words and stray hiragana under the pads of his skin. Haruka stares blankly at the characters strewn across the chatbox, sharp pixels fading out into a blur before the screen goes black.

A beat, then two. A shaky breath across cotton sheets.

_How am I going to face her tomorrow?_

_I think I may hav_ _e―_

 

\----------------

 

Saturday is a day accompanied by gentle clatters against the train tracks, thrumming all around them, reverberating across the compartment walls.

Haruka spends the long ride together feeling the warmth of Aki’s shoulders seeping through his jacket, keeping his knees locked together and hands balled on his lap.

Lips pursed, knuckles white, neither of them looks each other. Silence a thick wall between them, despite arms knocking together.

He feels her fidget, looking every which way. Up towards the ceiling one second, down to their feet the next. Haruka is still, for most part. Seated on the edge of the bench, he could look to the side, out the window diagonally away. Passing sceneries as rows of tall buildings starts to thin, the sun starting to set.

Aki jumps in her seat, sometimes, when a train passes by on the lane behind or in front of them.

Haruka tries to count windows whirling past, impossible as it is.

He lost count of how many stations they had already stopped at, thinks he naturally tunes out the announcement at this point.

They won’t miss their stop.

Hopefully.

It's not like he has a history of missing trains and/or stops or anything.

The other passengers files in and out, at different points. Sometimes they find themselves with only a group of elderly women in the car with them, chattering merrily two benches away from them. Sometimes they see people standing closer together, a silhouette behind the low sun filtering through the windows.

At some point, he thinks, he could hear how hard he’s breathing. Quiet to the point he feels self conscious.

Dry lips.

Fiddling fingers.

Aki lightly pinching his jacket as she stands up.

The train doors beside his seat opens.

 

\----------------

 

Haruka's strongest photograph is a shock of orange and brown – the back of Aki's head on the bottom left corner, half out of frame, sunset reflected on the stretch of ocean waters in front of her. Loose strands of hair woven in the sea breeze, her now shoulder length brown hair tucked inside her jacket hood. Fingers splayed out, a hair's breadth distance between the white borders of the opposite corner, harsh contrasts, shadow-covered tips and sharp lines running down the back of her hand. 

They were walking on top of a low seawall, when he took the picture. He remembers being five steps behind her, watching her patter forward, tittering every few steps, one foot over the other, heel to toe. She seemed further away, through his camera's lenses – an odd disconnect, watching her both on screen and in front of him.

A kick of her left leg forward, she held out her hands to balance herself. Her shadow thinned, a fading line across the stone from under her shoes.

He pressed the shutter, the moment a gust of wind blows, casting outlines of his hair cascading across Aki's shoulders.

 

\----------------

 

His fingers leave the corkboard full of photographs. Tracing the air above the irregular white lining across the wooden frame, he follows the corners jutting past the border, the soft wisps of textured pine wood peeking out from between two photos pinned at different angles. He's going to have to buy a new one, soon. Maybe a white board, instead. Maybe he'll take Aki and Makoto with him when he does, so they could pick cute animal magnets to decorate it with or something. 

The chair scrapes against the floor, barely audible. His newest pictures fall into his line of sight when he sits. Burst shots, photographs in succession, a trail of movement. A bounce of brown hair caressing her cheek, Aki in side profile, a far away look in her eyes. Looking straight into the lens, her eyes noticing the camera, peeking behind forward falling strands. A small tilt of her head, the beginnings of a smile. Two syllables. Red-stained cheeks. A cheeky grin.

_'Haruka-kun―'_

A line of orange-tinted memories across the middle of the corkboard, flowering into a gradation of blue – the world as Haruka sees through his view finder. Makoto asleep on the train seat opposite him, darkened from backlight, a bright summer sky through the windows behind him. The inside of his five hundred yen _conbini_ umbrella, rich cobalt blue under black curves of the metal rib. Clouds reflected in a puddle, fine lines of cobblestone streets.

' _I―'_

One picture stands out, an irregular discord of pattern in the form of pastel pink and washed out colours under his pointer finger. Haruka remembers it from the first day he took his Pentax for an outdoor test shoot. It was a chance shoot more than anything. He doesn't really remember taking it. A minute before he was standing in the middle of the station, behind the ticket gates. A minute later, he found himself staring down at the back of his camera, eyes locked on the soft billowing white skirt shown on the screen. Framed behind the station overhang and a row of ticket gate silhouettes, the photo was a storm of pink. Cherry blossoms in full bloom, lining the streets, scattered across the ground, petals raining down over an open red umbrella.

He had hesitated pinning this particular photo on the board, wondering if he should have kept it in an album or framed between the photos of twelve year old Makoto blowing soap bubbles on his porch and the group photo of his high school graduation.

' _Ah, she beat me to it―'_

Haruka lays his head down on folded arms and nuzzles his cheeks, tries to scratch away the warmth spreading across his face. The picture is right in front of him now, on the bottom most right corner. He doesn't think there's any place he could have put it that wouldn't catch his attention somehow. His eyes would surely trail back towards the little corner between the edge of his desk and his bookshelf.

 

\----------------

  
_“Hey...”_

_Balancing over the low wall, he catches passing shadows, birds flying overhead._

“ _Haruka-kun...”_

_Aki has her_ _fingers laced behind her, she kick_ _s_ _a foot forward with every step_  

_A_ _gust of wind blows, late-autumn chill._

_Thundering waves over the sand drowns the click of his shutter._

_The tide rolls in, the burst shots start._

_She turns, twirls on tiptoes, on beat with the rhythmic clicks._

“ _I like you!”_

_She_ _smiles through her words, voice like bubbling soda water, condensation droplets on clear crystalline glass._

‘ _Ah…’ Haruka thinks distantly, a tint of pink running across the bridge of his nose, reaching the tips of his ears. A photograph of her level with his chest, the last picture caught in a series of frames. The back screen of his camera showing an odd tug of Aki's lips, a show of teeth, shaping the tail end of her words. Right in front of him, in real time, the motions of her billowing skirt, her tousled hair brushing against her cheeks._

_Her blush tenfold, compared to the image he holds in his hands._

‘ _S_ _he beat me to i_ _t.’_

_He takes a slow, wavering step forward. Then another._

‘ _I wanted to say it first...’_

_He stops, feet lined together – steady, now, with only the last centimetres of distance between them._

“ _Aki, I―”_

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out @ Isu for putting up with my shit during the time I worked on this. Ilu.


End file.
